It’s All About the Service

It’s amazing to me how the worlds of professional acting and corporate success continue to intertwine. In my auditions, it’s all about the service. The television and movie and commercial world is run and driven by fear. They have no idea if the project is going to work. And this fills everyone involved with abject terror, from casting to the director to the camera operators. And this fear rolls right into the audition room. I knew this because walking into these auditions, it felt like someone was going to die and it might be me. And I was walking out of these rooms in fear, doing something that I loved to do.

Something had to change. How can I defeat this, or better yet, how can I use this to my advantage. 

And once I embraced this thought, this philosophy, I started to enjoy myself and my booking rate started to explode. 

If I walked into these fear based rooms embodying, through my thinking and my actions, the concept of Service, you would see the fear fall off their shoulders and they would gravitate towards me and they would want to return that service with the only currency they had which was the job. Asking the question, in my thinking and action, “How Can I Help?” 

Now keep in mind, when I talk about Service, I’m not talking about Servitude. Not talking about “fixing” the room. Not talking about being accepted. Not talking about being seen as the expert.

I’m talking about be present to this moment to recognize what is needed. “How Can I Help?” 

Because there is no way we can be present to this moment if we ourselves are in fear. What if I say something wrong? What if I can’t remember my lines? Is this shirt right? (My personal favorite.)

All of these are fear based thoughts, which the camera (and everyone else in the room) picks up on, and now we look and smell and taste like everyone else on the other side, and they don’t want anything to do with what looks, smells and tastes like them. They’re terrified enough as it is. 

And I find this Service based thinking also conquers in the boardroom, in the Zoom meeting, in the cubicle conversations after the lunch break. How can I help? And asking with a true intention meaning we are listening for the answer. And I find the more that I ask that question with a wild abandon, the universe, the void, the Boss, whatever is on the other side of that question, will never give you something you can’t handle. It’s only when we approach that question in fear, in needing something in return, that things get confusing. 

And we know this in our own experience right? When we ourselves are feeling anxious and someone comes up to us and asks with a true intention:

“How can I help, what do you need?” They become our new best friend. 

Unlike this guy, “ Oh man, what are you going to do?!” Eyes bugged, terrified. Our first reaction is to run, is to reject that person. 

I think this is how most actors enter the audition room. I think this is how most executives enter into their speaking engagements. I think it is too often how we show up to work. Needing something in return. 

I encourage us all to ask “How Can I Help?” To be present for the answer. To radically serve. To be radically present.